Showing posts with label sparks of self-awareness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sparks of self-awareness. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

The Rhythms Of Wandering

Twilight scouting out another quiet place
Untying our knotted hiking laces
Calling of the morning birds
Arising slowly amid a trickling peace

Well-used wool sweater, safe and warm
Our old dog, thick and furly
Quiet Fall mornings strung like amber beads
The warm smell of crusty new bread baking
Simple joy of your soft brown eyes

Breathing gently through restful sleep
Catching sight of forest dwellers
Changing tools and rhythms to make them better
Sloughing off our unused burdens
Sensing the complicated in the simple

Sleeping deeply in big tree shadows
Hearing small creek again as we awaken
Freed at last of choking specialization
Coming slowly together with the dawn,
Neither at work nor on vacation

Traveling widely yet always home
Mending socks and fixing breakdowns
Finding water and planning meals
Picking up yet another’s trash
Retiring early, safe in the darkness

Drying happily in a sunny breeze
Looking forward to our own cooking
Watching bees work on autumn flowers
Lingering where we really like it
Sipping wine and making music

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Vagabond Koans (1)

West Slope Sierra
Utterly impressed by their sheer size
They made sure they could cut them down
Now only giant stumps lay decomposing
neither logging nor tourist jobs remain

………
in the land of milk and honey, organic internet
there are still small towns with real people
where a young man might make a living for a family
while thirty million thirsty souls swarm the smoggy cities

………
basso profundo pickup truck
shatters peaceful predawn stillness
dumbass rumble at last dissipates
merciful silence refills his empty space

………
in the creaking breeze awaiting,
the stroke of god in the sunlight
bursting out with pregnant silence
mere sequoia emitting oxygen and grace

………
buying wood for the metal campfire ring
to cook the trout dumped from a truck
locked safely within his mobile modular
behold the happy camper

………
warm against the autumn frost
quiet there beside the lake
soaking in that radiant silence
full moon sets at nearly dawn

………
still gurgling over polished autumn granite
slurping into holes and eddies
sierra stream carries on its business
and then the reservoir

………
from out the wide smog-choked, dusty central valley
sheer sierra wilderness rises to catch the snow
the big trees and bigger mountains soar
barely beyond it spreads that awful desert

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Anonymous Cosmic Mercy


The night sky always fills with a billion stars and the Milky Way
The moon waxing, waning and carries in that fresh and renewing tide
The vast world ocean seen from space, so tiny and blue brings tears to the eyes
Sunrise following sunset all the days of our short but merry little lives

Fresh breezes awaken under clearing skies beneath clean ocean swells
Trout somehow wriggle in tiny streams at 9000 feet of elevation
Snow-capped mountains irrigate endless undulating evergreen forests
A night spent in its coolness exposes the beauty of the open desert

An ancient, old-growth, climax woodland spreads its magic silence
We walk as the earth rotates in its orbit about the sun as it circles our moving galaxy
Truth expands at the speed of light in all directions with no issuing center
Words and images surprise even the artist in their flow from some hidden spring

Eureka inspiration instantaneously solves a long-considered problem
The instinctual urge to love is nourished by the inborn need to be cared for
Holy steaming volcano wreathed in glaciers noses toward the heavens
Inner peace commences, brought on by a gentle rain, beneath a sheltering roof

The entirety of the universe-wide life force echoes fractally on this one small planet
The simple starkness of the limitless and eternal void invisibly surrounds us
The blackness between the stars amid its vast silence envelops our feeble shouts
Grand potency of giant storms coming ashore from far away, places us in our context

The apple tree stands poised in true grace for days, dropping silently spinning blossoms
Tiny streams of consciousness drain into the vast collective unconscious sea
The helplessness expressed by the myriad companion infant life forms entangles us
The wonder of all the microbial cosmos is seen within one simple drop of pond water`

Those trillion separate living cells work together to form one human being
A supreme, indolent adaptation is casually expressed by the vanishing cats of the world
That wondrous black skin and colorless fur disappears right along with the polar bear
The unnecessary gifts called language, culture and self-contemplation amaze us


Waking up every morning, amazingly we find senses and memories both still intact
Whales tail-sail in huge white-capped seas off the African coast just for sport
A tiny shaded stream trickles in a canyon in the midst of some pitiless desert
Dragonflies flicker on their prismatic latticed-winged fairytale lifetime journeys of mere days

The blind good fortune sustains us through no fault of our own
The mantra of the ocean is heard while meditating at a distance from the shore
At last some may realize that they are unable to lose any time, any more
We could be amazed by the rebirth of potential that comes with each and every morning

An opportunity for quiet contemplation is afforded by the lengthening shadows of the fall
A warm shower and feeling clean clothes when it’s been way too long may be a rebirth
Lost sight is miraculously recovered looking through a pair of inexpensive glasses
There is a wonder to formulas which can compute physical phenomena such as gravity

I can even calculate the exact percent of the sun’s energy as it strikes my nose
Life on earth continually re-flourishes despite repeated mass extinctions
We totemize the phenomenal visual acuity of the magnificent birds of prey
There is a sweet spot between the muggy heat of Venus and the bitter dry cold on Mars

The power of mere mental images can spur so much human action
The wolves move in so quietly to resettle their former habitats
With a profusion of languages we all strive to say exactly the same things
The perfection expressed by the common house fly is revealed upon closer inspection

Hummingbird flights become total ballet in ultra slow motion photography
We join the apparent movement of long thunderclaps as they rumble across the horizon
How very long these few very short years can seem to our shortsighted consciousness
A billion separate raindrop prisms conjoin to form a perfect single rainbow

Some of us thoughtlessly enjoy hot water, light, heat and a gas cooking fire on demand
We strive to be totally spent and drained, yet full of a hungry joy
Ice-capped mountains wrinkle up in the collision of vast and thin crustal plates
Driving along at 60 miles per hour we can merely observe as the world passes by


These brief sparks of self-awareness inside the boundless blank that may be the void

Friday, March 25, 2011

Help Me To Express Myself In Silence

Help me to find that place just before the happily ever after
Help me to find all those people I keep feeling that I must still meet
Help me to find out where I was during all that lost time
Help me to find those other ways to see and to hear

Help me to listen and to make sure that I can still feel
Help me to overcome these nonsensical fears
Help me not speak just to fill up good silence
Help me to find the path again as I move on every morning

Help me fill the emptiness that slowly replaces my anger
Help me to find just a little time to catch that next oncoming sunset
Help me to live up to my always meager but ever-decreasing potential
Help me to stay up late, sleep soundly and rise very early

Help me to know to ford where the river is slow and shallow enough
Help me to bring back memories from the world in which I sleep
Help me to focus as I am swirled about like dust in a storm
Help me to find all my sheep before this darkness is complete

Help me to find a quiet place to rest as night falls again
Help me to move on though all the work is clearly not done
Help me to laugh loudly and openly, early and often
Help me to put down the bright toys of time-wasting illusion

Help me to merge with the grace of the apple tree as it blossoms
Help me to understand the things that flow from my own creation
Help me to peel back the petals of life’s lotus blossom mandala
Help me to think deeply without harboring any thoughts at all

Help me to know my position as I trace out life’s finite circle
Help me to pray continuously, without words, to no god at all
Help me to use simple silence to express all I ever need to say
Help me to find mercy in this hot and angry, loudly-shouting crowd


Help me to merely achieve the dignity and usefulness of one decaying tree

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

May You Take Your Leave With Dignity

In the turbulence of this chaotic maelstrom
may you learn to center dynamically, without conscious effort
Then to note with some amazement how marvelous is it all,
a single petal slowly spinning towards the ground

Amid the spindrift of this cosmic storm
may you find the simple peace of staying warm
Somewhere in the quiet dignity of the sighing evergreens
the sound of snowfall on your shoulders

During that magic hour before the sunrise
may you enjoy your emergence from good sleep
As the colors once more return
the morning birds begin their calling

In short intervals of blessed silence you may find
may you have the time to pause within them
To draw upon their great and pregnant strength,
thus to calm the miracle of your heartbeat

Amidst the roiling blur of this eternal present
may your soul find a lifetime mate
That you need not always stay anonymous and live alone
perhaps again to dust and ashes, wrapped in each other’s arms

After years of honest work and love and preparation
may you take your leave with dignity
Having summed and mused and smiled and perhaps gained a little understanding,
ready to decay with the dignified grace of some ancient tree